


Eyeball & Orbit

by Fishielicious



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Blindness, Blow Jobs, Bruises, Gen, M/M, On the Run, Oral Sex, Pre-Quest, Sibling Incest, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-09
Updated: 2014-05-05
Packaged: 2017-12-18 04:39:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/875730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fishielicious/pseuds/Fishielicious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With the mines and forges of Ered Luin failing, Fíli and Kíli live on the road and work in the world of men to earn their living. They have always managed to stick together until one violent night forces them apart. Now, they'll have to decide for themselves whether they're better off alone, or if being together is worth fighting and worth suffering for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Knuckle in Eye

**Author's Note:**

> Explicit label is for later chapters, if y'all know what I mean hint hint wink wink nudge nudge.
> 
> Y'all don't even know the self-control I had to exercise to prevent myself posting this before I was done with it. Anyway sorry I am sick as hell of fantasy dialog-speak. I don't like reading it and I don't like writing it so I did not bother with it in this fic.

It seemed appropriate later that Fíli couldn't picture how it happened.

He remembered the feelings, the specific points of pressure on his body. That bone in his spine that crunched against the bar, the hammer-strike noise inside his skull when his head hit the floor, the curdled milk smell of the pimpled man's sweat when his collarbone grazed Fíli's face and when he fell down on top of him. The breathless panic of being pinned to the ground and the moment he choked on Kíli's name in his throat with the pimpled man's elbow bearing down on his neck.

Then the swell of triumph in his chest when he flipped the pimpled man onto his back, the hatred spilling through his fists and the numbness spreading from his knuckles when he punched, the words frothing in his head, _don't touch, don't look at, never again, not my brother,_ knocking the pimpled man's skinny arms out of the way, the slick slippery sense of blood on his fists sliding across the pimpled man's face.

But he didn't remember what it looked like.

He remembered the double-toned sounds of Netta the bargirl's screams, at once piercing and guttural, when she said, "Stop! Stop! You fucking idiot!"

And he remembered when he knew the pimpled man was quiet under him, now, his long fingernails no longer scraping across the skin on Fíli's forearms.

Fíli sat back on his heels, still straddling the unmoving torso. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and slimy blood smeared across his cheek.

The tavern was quiet and empty. He struggled to catch his breath.

Something soft and wet hit the back of his head. He had to crane his neck to see Netta leaning over the bar, pickled egg in hand. "Are you stupid?" she said. "Well, are you?" She threw the egg and it hit him square in his sore nose, the point where, in the middle of the tavern, a flipped over table and thick stale tension had broken with a sharp elbow.

"What? Did you kill him?" she screamed.

"He’d deserve it," Fíli said, struggling to find his voice, which belonged to a part of him he'd forgotten existed.

His head felt heavy but he looked down at the pimpled man, he knew he looked at his face, because later he would remember it as the first time seeing him. The pimple on his temple, white head half-burst. The rest was regal reds and purples, vibrant and dark, swollen, melting. He shook his head and slapped the pimpled man's pulpy face. His head lolled off onto his shoulder.

"Deserves it," Fíli said. "Oh, shit."

"Get out of here," Netta said. "You shit-for-brains. Get out of here!"

He stood up, tripping over the pimpled man's limp legs.

Kíli wasn't there.

He wasn't in the tavern. No one was. The fight had spilled out into the street and Fíli had a knife in each hand when he opened the door and screamed Kíli's name. The cool night air hit his throat and lungs and wet face like a slap.

His breath was gasping. He listened and squinted into the dark. He could hear sharp loud laughter and the mumble of faraway voices but there was nothing in front of him. Near him. Until he heard beating footsteps on the dirt behind him.

He spun, knives up.

Kíli laughed, stopping a foot shy of the knife points. Kíli's nose was bleeding freely down his face and chin, but he was smiling, bleary-eyed.

Fíli shoved one knife back into his belt and grabbed Kíli's arm. "Come on," he said.

Kíli swayed back on his heels. "What."

"We gotta go." Fíli yanked him forward, out in the street, and had to catch him before he fell. With Kíli struggling to his feet in Fíli's arms, he looked up and down and tried to pick the safest way to go.

Kíli tripped over his own boot. "What."

"Got your stuff?" Fíli was managing words better than Kíli, but only just.

"Yesss," Kíli said, but he didn't sound sure. "Why. Are we going?"

"Going. Yep." Fíli picked a direction and dragged Kíli behind him. "Hurry."

They stumbled on at a pace between a walk and a run, silence and jagged breath, and when Fíli saw a lamp bobbing down the street, he pulled Kíli into a dark corner and held his hand over Kíli's mouth. When the man passed and the lamplight dimmed and they could no longer hear the crunch of boots on the dirt, they came out and moved blindly and quietly as possible--Kíli kept running into Fíli's back and cursing and Fíli kept hitting him and telling him to shut his mouth--forward, out of town.

Fíli knew he had to keep Kíli going. Kíli was exhausted and barely retaining consciousness. Fíli knew how he felt, but he had the energy and sobriety that came with shock and fear. Netta's words kept shouting in his ear. Did you kill him? There were times he wanted to go back and check on him, and times when he remembered the words spoken in the tavern, the shrill laughter and the pointed cruel looks on the pimpled man's face when he wanted to go back and make sure that he was.

He and Kíli hadn't gone into that tavern looking for trouble. All they'd been looking for was a drink. A drink before they went home. "Home." They'd been staying in the village for the season. They'd arrived at the dawn of spring when the snow was melting off the trees. They'd found steadier work than they'd often had with the town blacksmith, a big and hard-working but aging and arthritic man. He welcomed their help for his busy season. Spring was when people built and worked hardest and consequently when they needed the most from the village smithy. Fíli and Kíli stayed in the drafty lean-to attached to the forge. They liked sleeping near the fires. Even when they were out, the hot scent of them and of soft metal swirled in the air and filled their lungs and hearts.

They were leaving things there, but not much. They had only been there a month and they did not accumulate possessions. There was a water skin Fíli would miss. But they kept most of their belongings on them, in their coats. That's how the Dwarves of Erebor lived now. That was how they had to live when home was nowhere.

Fíli was grateful for that, at the moment. He kept reminding himself, they hadn't gone into that tavern looking for trouble. They came into the tavern for a drink after work.

"Hey!"

Fíli had gotten distracted, his heartbeat was still quick when he heard Kíli calling behind him.

They were outside the village now, under the dark open sky and on top of the muddy road, and Kíli was yards behind him, yelling at him to slow down.

Fíli turned around. Kíli was staggering back and forth across the road. Fíli was positive he was exaggerating the way his feet were criss-crossing and struggling to find the ground.

"What?" he called back, forcing his voice into a hiss and a hiccup down his throat.

"Can we stop?" Kíli didn't bother to manage his volume. His voice rushed past Fíli loud and vibrating.

"No." Fíli looked up at the sky and hugged his arms.

"Where are we going?" Fíli would not look at Kíli. He knew he was probably looking wounded and weak and he had this way of turning himself pale and sickly when he wanted something; he used to do it all the time when they were little.

"I don't know," Fíli said. "Somewhere else."

Kíli was barely even getting closer at all. Fíli glanced down and he was still yards away, maybe moving more side-to-side than forward. He was taking steps backwards, too, now, Fíli could've sworn.

"Come on. I'm tired and I can't breathe out my nose." Kíli punctuated his complaint with a rumbling, squealing attempt to clear his nostrils. "From all the blood."

Fíli turned around and kept walking. Now Kíli jogged to catch up. "Why are you doing this?" he said, out of breath but sounding the most clear-headed he had all night.

Fíli left the road and started climbing up a sloping, grassy hill to their left. He could see a line of low trees silhouetted at the top. "We can sleep up here," he said, gesturing vaguely at the trees.

"Why can't we sleep at home?"

"We've lived there a month and all the sudden it's home?" Fíli was starting to feel light-headed as they neared the top of the hill.

"You know what I mean. What did you--oh, shit--"

Fíli looked back to see Kíli sliding halfway down the hill on his stomach.

The grass under Fíli's boots was wet and he skated down the hill until he got to Kíli. Then he fell on his ass reaching down to help his brother up.

"I'm not moving," Kíli said. His face, cheek resting in the grass, was slick and splattered with mud where he'd face-planted on the ground.

Fíli's hand was still on his wrist, trying to pull him up. He could feel Kíli breathing on his hand, he could feel his breath slowing, becoming shallower until Fíli knew he was asleep.

Kíli could sleep anywhere. Drunk, sober, falling asleep on a wet hillside was not unusual for him.

Fíli squeezed Kíli's wrist and looked up at the wide blank sky. The clouds were colorless and uniform and there were no stars.

He guessed it had been a good situation, them with the blacksmith in that town. They built the cemetery gates, they shoed every horse in a ten mile radius. They repaired pitchforks and plows and every stew pot in the village.

But this wasn't the first town they'd had to leave when there wasn't room for them anymore. Last year, a farmer thought they--one of them, at least, maybe both--thought they behaved inappropriately with his daughter. Countless villages came and went when there just wasn't the work, just wasn't the food to support themselves. They always left on the last exhale.

But now, Fíli's heart kept speeding and he kept catching the smell of blood, seeing dark glimpses of split flesh and purple blood under his fists. His knuckles, the knuckles still gripping Kíli's wrist were bruised and raw. He could barely feel his fingers.

They couldn't sleep on this hill. Fíli tried to stand up. He thought he could pull Kíli the rest of the way up the hill, to the relative safety of the trees. But Kíli was heavier than he remembered and he was made of lead and he couldn't get farther than, on his knees, sliding his sore hands under Kíli's stomach and flipping him onto his side.

His arm drifted down and fell on Kíli's ribcage. His fingers brushed the fabric of Kíli's shirt. He put his head down so his forehead rested against the nape of Kíli's neck and he thought he would just rest his eyes for a moment there.


	2. Foot in Mouth

He didn't remember falling asleep, but he woke in the morning blooming in aches and pains, starting with his head.

He had, at some point, rolled over onto his stomach, probably to shield his eyes from the rising sun. He tried not to move, except to bring his arms up around his head, making a dark and quiet cave in which to exist.

It was a vain attempt. Try as he might, he couldn't help but hear the insects whirring and the birds whistling, tiny feet bending grass under them. And he started to notice how his front felt wet and sticky and how the grass irritated his skin.

Keeping his hands up over his eyes, he rolled onto his side to look for Kíli, but Kíli wasn't there.

He shot up, cursed the sunlight and his headache and Kíli, wherever he was. Panning across the hill, up and down the road, Fíli couldn't find him.

Maybe he overreacted. The night before. Everything this morning seemed so quiet. The morning fire were burning in the village same as ever. He could smell them on the wind. The hillside was empty, the road was drying. He couldn't hear footsteps beating from far away, even when he sucked his breath in and held his head high and still.

Then he used all that air built up in his lungs to call Kíli's name.

"What?" Kíli's voice answered from behind him, high up on the hill.

"What are you doing?" Fíli didn't turn around to see him.

"Nothing. Where are we going? If we were back in the village, we could be fixing breakfast right now."

"We could have nooses around our necks right now."

"You're being so dramatic. You sound like Thorin." Kíli's voice was suddenly much closer.

"I didn't know you could hear that." Fíli rubbed the bridge of his nose.

Kíli plopped down in the grass beside him. "Got ears like a cat," he said.

"More like a bat."

"I can hear that, too. What happened in there?"

"I think I went a little overboard." Fíli covered his face with his hands.

Kíli grabbed his wrist and held his hand in his own. "Your knuckles are swollen."

Fíli winced and pulled away. "Yeah, someone kept running into them with his face."

"So that's it, then?"

"He was unconscious when I left."

"Probably passed out drunk."

"I don't think so. What happened with you?"

"Oh, nothing." Kíli sighed. "It wasn't really a proper fight. I think I landed a few punches, though." He sounded intolerably proud of himself.

Fíli didn't respond and after a while, Kíli put his hand on his back and started rubbing in circles. "You were really angry, weren't you?"

"You didn't hear what he said."

"What did he say?"

"Don't ask me that."

"Was it about me?"

Fíli shrugged.

Kíli sighed and leaned into Fíli's back with his forearm. "You shouldn't do that for me." But Fíli could feel his breath on his neck and the way Kíli's body relaxed into his and his chin nodded against Fíli's shoulder. "All right, so you won't go back."

"Can't."

"Stop whining. We won't go back, so where are we going?"

"That way, I suppose." Fíli pointed down the road, his opposite hand still cradling his head.

"What's that way?" Fíli could hear Kíli sucking his tongue and could imagine the one-eyed squint on his face.

"Left the map back in town."

"But we know which direction we're going, don't we? So we're still a step ahead of Thorin."

Fíli stood up, his legs weak and wobbly. "Let's just go." He grabbed Kíli's arm and hauled him to his feet.

Kíli started down the hill, but Fíli caught his arm. "Not on the road."

Kíli rolled his eyes, but he nodded his head at the same time.

They kept going, parallel to the road but just over the hill. Every now and then, they'd go up the hill to check and make sure the road was still there. That was all easy enough until the hill flattened and there wasn't anywhere to hide. Kíli said it didn't matter. No one was following them. Probably just the smith back in town was wondering where his workers went, and no one else even noticed the goddamn difference.

Fíli told him he was free to go back and test that theory if he liked, but Fíli would not be joining him.

Kíli sputtered and flapped his arms and fell lengths behind, but Fíli kept walking and Kíli was like a dog, if Fíli got too far away, he'd run to catch him up. And then when he did, he'd proceed to act like he didn't want to be there.

Fíli did think he was going to lose him for a moment, when they finally came to the next town and Fíli refused to stop.

"Not far enough," he said, pulling his hood down over his forehead, his hand hovering continuously around his face.

Kíli nearly went apoplectic--Fíli thought he might hit him--until Fíli agreed to stop for supplies and a full night's sleep in an inn.

Fíli made sure they were up and on the road by dawn.

The rest of the way they spent in near silence.

Kíli was in one of his sulks. Fíli was well acquainted with the signs. They never lasted long--he didn't have the attention span to stay angry or the patience to stay quiet--but this one was compounded by his real exhaustion and, Fíli thought, confusion.

Well, too bad if he was confused. Fíli wasn't going to keep talking about it. No, he wasn't happy that they had to leave the first good job they'd had in months, but Fíli hadn't got mad when Kíli messed around with that farm girl and they'd had to leave that town in a hurry. If they could just get to the next town, they could forget about the whole thing.

It was early one afternoon when Fíli spotted a little white box of a cottage in the low spot behind a dark green copse. When he squinted, he could make out the stones in the dark lines running across the valley. Fences.

He pulled on Kíli's arm. "You see that farm?" He pointed.

"If you can call it that," Kíli said.

"Well, it may not be much from here. But look, what time of year is it?"

Kíli wrinkled his nose and refused to answer.

"It's almost time to shear the sheep and take the wool to market, isn't it? So they might be hiring help."

"I'm not a farmhand. I don't know about you." Kíli gave him a look up and down with his lip curled.

Fíli threw back his head and laughed, the taste bitter coming up his throat and his own voice dog-like. "Oh, that's pathetic, _your highness_. You used to give our tutors that look."

"You're being about as annoying as one of them right now."

"So, I make one little mistake and suddenly you can't seem to remember all the times I've saved your ass. That farmer had a scythe."

Kíli started to laugh, but stopped halfway and cleared his throat, like he remembered he was supposed to be angry. "You didn't save me. That man was old, and we hadn't even got around to sharpening that scythe yet."

Fíli had to push his tongue against the back of his throat to keep from cutting up. "You were asleep when he came around, and if I hadn't heard him--okay, okay, and besides that, who carried you five miles in the snow when you broke your ankle hunting--"

"You didn't carry me any five miles, I made the last two on my own, and my ankle wasn't broken, it was sprained, and besides that, what about the time you got the flux and I had to spoon feed you oatmeal for a week?"

"You pushed me out of a tree when I was fifteen and I hit my head on a rock!"

"You nearly cut off my arm when I was six!"

"Shut up, that barely even bled and if you hadn't been such a baby about it--like you always are--maybe you wouldn't have had to wait till you were seventeen to learn how to throw a knife."

"You're calling me a baby and you're the one making us leave the only good job we've ever had--the only job I've ever enjoyed--"

"Oh, please."

"The only job in a long time I've actually liked, that would've given us money to bring back to Ma in the winter because you got into a fight and are scared of taking responsibility for it."

"I'm not the only one who got in a fight, Kíli, in case you forgot how this started. I'm just the one who finished it."

"By killing someone."

Fíli froze.

When they'd fought before, which wasn't often, things seemed to resolve themselves after a punch or two and a bloody nose and split lip between them. But Fíli couldn't raise his fist now, his swollen split fists. So he just said, "Well, I don't give a fuck what you do. I'm going to that farm and if they have work for me there, I'm taking it."

Kíli's sunburned face went drawn and white.

Fíli wanted to apologize but he wasn't even sure what for and Kíli wasn't apologizing for saying he'd killed someone. He didn't kill anyone. And he wasn't apologizing.

So he had to watch Kíli set his jaw and start down the hill, towards the far off road that wound narrowly away from the little white cottage in the valley.

Fíli wanted to throw something at his head as he retreated. Or yell for him to come back. His heart was beating quicker.

All he'd remember later was Kíli's silver hair clasp flashing in the sun as he walked away, that bright flash on a dark field. And he felt at the back of his head, felt the ridges of his own matching clasp under his fingers.

He turned, hand still on the clasp, and started down the opposite slope, toward the farm.

*

The farmer was an old man with an old wife and many dead children.

They were quiet and kind and they didn't have much, now, but they could use help for the season, shearing their sheep, taking the wool to market. The trip took a whole day and the old woman didn't want her man trying it alone anymore. They couldn't offer him much, but they could keep him fed and housed for a few months and when it was all done, he would get a share of what they sold at market.

The old woman, out of earshot of her husband, said they hadn't known what to do. With their children gone, they didn't have anyone. She said she knew they could trust him just from looking at his face. She said he had an honest face and the gods must have sent him to them.

Just so she won't worry, the old man told him later, smiling with all the gaps in his mouth.

They would have loved Kíli and Kíli would have loved them.

He started out right away, helping them. They had a couple of cows, Flower and Sunshine. Flower had a yearling calf and Sunshine had just given birth the month before. And, the old woman pulled on Fíli's shoulder and whispered in his ear, "If times get rough, we'd eat the calves first." And then she added, thoughtfully, "Only because we've known Flower and Sunshine longer."

Then there were chickens, a little group of them Fíli couldn't properly count because they never stopped moving. They all lived in a neat little white coop that looked like a model of the little white cottage.

The chickens didn't have names, and they got eaten more readily because there was a big red cockerel and new little chicks born all the time.

The old man and his wife grew patches of vegetables and long waving lines of wheat, coloring underneath the sun.

The sheep were the main thing. The old farmer would need help with them, soon, the big gray homogenous flock with mountains of wool to give.

But in the meantime, Fíli helped re-thatch the roof. He spent whole afternoons tying bundles of straw together and fixing them down with hazel branches. And the old woman, her hands were stiff, especially in the morning, and he made sure to wake up earlier than she did to milk Sunshine and Flower before she could.

Fíli didn't know how they got by without him. Without anyone. Maybe in the winter it was easier. Maybe they sat by the fire all day. But of course there was firewood to gather and cut and Flower and Sunshine to care for and the sheep Fíli always heard bleating through the fog on misty mornings.

The sheep bleating was lulling, satisfying, made him feel needed if not quite whole.

He grinned to himself when he thought like that, if Thorin could read his mind, could see him right now kneeling down in the cold wet morning with his hands around the teat of a grunting, shifting cow with dirt and straw stuck to her underside, just so a human wouldn't have to.

This morning, with the cows' milk emptied into a bucket, he sat on the milking stool with wisps of steam curling off the milk and tickling his chin, and stared off into the placid fog where somewhere the sheep called.

But every time he closed his eyes he saw that silver flash in the dark.

This is what life was like now for the Dwarves of Erebor, he told himself. His own father left and never came back when he and Kíli were young. Dwalin came home at intervals throughout the year, for a week's stretch at most. Thorin was gone for years at the time, sometimes. Even Balin, when he was younger, spent his time in the villages of men.

It was necessary. They couldn't live in the mines of the Blue Mountains. The gold wasn't there, the coal wasn't there, they were lucky to find a chunk of iron ore.

Every Dwarf in the Blue Mountains who wasn't stuck in the failing mines had to go out on his own. That it had taken Fíli and Kíli until they were past sixty-five to do so was one thing, one thing that made Thorin's face tighten. That they went together seemed even worse to him. Fíli remembered always those looks on Thorin's face, his heavy dark brow drawn like a thundercloud, forewarning a storm that never came.

When Fíli laughed too loud, when he stumbled and the sword fell from his hands, when they were younger and he carried Kíli on his back and Kíli shrieked when he threw him in the creek, when his ma still kissed him on his forehead (she had to stand on her tiptoes while he bowed his head to do it, now) and pressed biscuits into his hand before he left in the morning, when their humorless tutors told Thorin his nephews were easily distracted and uninterested in anything not involving mass carnage and glorious Dwarvish victories. Fíli had seen him darken, had shied away from the onslaught he knew should come but never did. He could never remember Thorin yelling at him. Just Thorin leaving. Just him walking away. Just his back retreating, and the light knocking off the clasp at the back of his head.

Kíli wanted to be just like--

So maybe it was time to let him go. Kíli wasn't anything like Thorin, but maybe that was Fíli's fault.

Maybe it was better for both of them, if that's what Kíli wanted and Fíli could never be--

Maybe he needed to let Kíli--

He worried, back even before all of this, he worried all the time that he wasn't doing anything good for Kíli. It made him scared when he thought of Kíli having an older brother like him. He only thought that way when they weren't together, when they were, it was something different, there was something different that passed between them in bursts of laughter and the rhythmic sometimes meaningful sometimes not hum of their voices and the barely-heard sound of their silence and the soft warmth of knowing and being known, pressure on skin, and then when Kíli fell asleep it was back how maybe it should've been, when Fíli watched him and he stopped hearing that near silence but heard again the loud doubts and the thunder pass over Thorin's face--

Fíli lost track of his thoughts with the fog rolling in front of him. Kíli was probably doing well. If the smith in town had needed help. And, if not.

He felt sick when he got to that idea, when he thought of the whole wide empty world and his brother alone in front of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In New Zealand they call roosters roosters but apparently not in the UK. Is this true UK people? I only know what Wikipedia tells me.
> 
> I went with the UK term because Tolkien even though I still imagine LOTR taking place in New Zealand but I'm probably writing it like it takes place in the blackland prairie so idek.
> 
> Look it was a struggle not to have these farmers raising cotton and corn and hunting feral hogs give me a break.
> 
> Anyway these have been my notes on one very minuscule worry about "historical verisimilitude" in a fantasy setting, I'm sure there's lots more and more major inconsistencies (they're yeoman farmers ok what is feudalism don't question me).


	3. Frog in Throat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, I know I was supposed to post yesterday, but I got drunk instead. :( Still planning on posting tomorrow... This one is just a little late.

His fingers were going numb around the milk pail's handle and Flower was shifting restlessly. The cows needed to be led out to graze and their stalls needed to be cleaned out, fresh straw laid down.

Once Flower and Sunshine were out and their stalls were clean and tidy with fresh water from the well in their water buckets, Fíli took the milk in to the old woman. She was beating the rugs out in the front of the house, but she came in when she heard him in the house. Porridge was on for breakfast.

When they sat down to it, the old man said, "So it's been a month, now."

The old woman patted Fíli’s hand, the wrinkles stiff and thick on her old fingers. "We've so enjoyed having you with us," she said, like he was a houseguest.

Fíli nodded but didn't know what to say. He turned his spoon over and over in the porridge.

"We'll start shearing sheep next week. With your help, we reckon we can have the wool into market by the week after. Do you have plans after that?"

"Um." Fíli stared hard into the porridge, trying to guess the information the old man was looking for. He was immediately and instinctually suspicious of these sorts of questions, particularly when asked by men. "I don't know. I suppose I'll--well, I'll just move on is all." He met the old man's gaze and shrugged. "I can smith. I'm pretty good at that. I can do most any kind of manual labor men need. I'll just keep doing that."

The old man nodded and looked at his wife.

She spoke before he did. "Well, we think the gods sent us you. Well, we do. We told you all our children are gone. Two died when they were babies--a son and a daughter. Our oldest daughter died of the influenza when she was a teenager. He nearly went, too." She nodded her head at her husband. "But he knew he had to take care of me."

"You take care of me," he mumbled, looking down at his bowl just the way Fíli had done a moment ago.

She kept on. "After that, for a long time, it was just the two of us and our son. He's the one--we couldn't have done all this alone, old as we've got. He always helped us plant and harvest, raise the sheep, and do all the things you've helped us do in the past month."

"And much more."

"Yes, and much more. But last fall--" she coughed and the old man's shaking hand closed around hers. "Our son was hurt. He hung on for a week or more with the fever. Couldn't really make much sense when he tried to talk. And then he went. And we slaughtered that bull. And then it was just us." The woman squeezed back on her old man's hand and he rubbed at his eye with a dry brown knuckle. "And we hadn't thought one bit about hiring someone to help us this season, though, of course, it seems silly now, to think we could've done it alone. But here you came. And, dear, we just couldn't do it without you. So, we wanted to ask. If you don't have plans after the season's over, why don't you stay on? Here, with us? Lord knows we need you, and we hope you're comfortable here."

Fíli felt himself go beet red. He smoothed down his beard. "Well, of course, I'm comfortable here. And I'm--I'm sorry to hear about your son. And, the others." He thought he might melt into a puddle and soak into the dirt floor. He was fiddling with his spoon and the handle was in danger of snapping off in his hand. "But, I don't know, I--I don't want to sound ungrateful or--"

"Don't be silly, dear, just say what you mean to say. Oh! We never asked. You must have a family to get back to."

"Well, I." Fíli cleared his throat. "I have a mother. She lives in the Blue Mountains." He hesitated.

"Well, she must miss you. But of course you'd have plenty of time to visit her, just the same as you do now."

"Um." He stared down at his hands. "It's not just that. I have this. Brother. Who, it's actually a funny story—well.” He put his hand on his forehead. “No it’s not, but I had been traveling with him. We separated just before I came here."

"Where is he now, dear?"

"I'm not really sure. Maybe in the town up the road."

"Well." The old man stood up with his bowl in hand. "When we take the wool to market, we can look for him. If you want to."

The old woman didn't seem ready to quit the conversation and he put her hand down over Fíli's to keep him sitting. "Maybe when you find him, you can bring him back here."

"I tried to bring him here in the first place," he said, and immediately wondered why he'd done it.

The old woman was all questions and concerns. The side effects of kindness. It made Fíli miss his family, where no one got to ask you how you were feeling. Especially not why you were feeling it.

He squirmed in his chair and tried to keep his hand still so she wouldn't notice.

"Why didn't he come?" She seemed at a loss to understand why anyone wouldn't want to come to their farm.

Fíli smiled at that, despite himself. "Well, he doesn't really think farm work is for him." He kept grinning down at his fingers. "He wanted to find the smith in town to see if he would take him on. He's good at that. We worked for the smith in the last town. He was angry we left, I guess."

"Why did you leave?"

He knotted his fingers together. "Um. We didn't much get on with some of the villagers, you could say."

"Leave the boy alone if he doesn't want to talk about it," the old man said from somewhere across the room.

The old woman's ruddy cheeks went even redder. "I don't mean to pry." She took her hand from his.

"Well, I'll go. Feed the chickens." Fíli cleared his throat and stood up from the table.

His legs were weak, somehow, and standing in the middle of a crowd of squawking, flapping chickens, scattering handfuls of grain didn't give him space to clear his head.

He could only think of the old man, his close watchful eyes on Fíli when he said they could look for Kíli when they went into town. The thought at once made him still, made his heart stutter. It hadn't hit him all this time, while he milked cows and carried water and bound straw bundles together. He hadn't had much space or time to think with his old couple. For how peaceful, quiet and calm their farm was, there was always something to be doing. Animals, plants, fences, roofs, cooking, cleaning, drying, hanging, mowing, hauling, bailing, doctoring, sharpening, spearing. There wasn't any planting to be done but it was talked about often and with much enthusiasm. They discussed planting seasons and speculated on the chances for rain, when the sheep would lamb. At night he was asleep before his head hit the straw. In the morning, he was barely conscious before he was out in the stall with Flower and Sunshine and the calves and in between, the free time he had he could count in seconds and he spent most of them wondering why the old couple didn't seem to keep beer around and if attempts to introduce them to the brewing process would be met kindly or not.

Now, he finally had to think about Kíli, about how now it was a matter of trying to find him. About how Kíli hadn't come to find him. About how he'd never not known where his brother was before. About how he hadn't had to braid his own hair in so long he had trouble getting them straight, and by the time he went to sleep they had almost always fallen out. When he did it himself, he missed the feeling of Kíli's fingers in his hair, the hot breath of his long morning yawns on Fíli's ear.

That night, Fíli lay awake with his muscles tense and aching and couldn't keep his eyes open in the morning.

By the time he and the old man herded the sleep close to the house for shearing, Fíli hadn't had a real night's sleep in a week. He needed the work to go fast.

Every night he thought about leaving while the couple slept, making for town, following Kíli's trail. If they had owned ponies or horses, even, Fíli would've taken one and gone in the night.

Even after all their kindness.

But he made himself wait. Shearing scissors in hand, he thought they'd be in town, soon, and selling the wool would put money in his pocket. The old man thought it would be a week before they got to market. Fíli thought he could beat that projection easily. And where could Kíli go in just a matter of days?

If he weren't already gone.

Fíli didn't really have much experience shearing sheep, but the dogs helped herd them and keep them contained and one-by-one Fíli grabbed them by the feet and flipped them over so their dirty bellies were exposed. He held the sheep as they bleated and struggled, and he tried not to cut through their surprisingly tender skin as he shaved them down to the wool's root.

The sheep were slippery and fought hard against the shears. He and the old man were both covered head to foot in mud at the end of the day, and they'd both been kicked more than once. Fíli could taste the crusted blood on his upper lip. But they were nearly finished. Just before the bottom tip of the sun dipped below the horizon, they had to hurry back to the cottage to bring Flower and Sunshine in. The old woman had killed a chicken to cook for supper.

At the table, Fíli asked again when they would take the wool into town. They had bags enough to fill the cart. There was another farmer several miles away who always lent them an ox to pull the cart in exchange for a bag of wool, and Fíli volunteered to make the trek to retrieve the ox.

"Well." The old man cradled his cup in his hand and took a thoughtful sip. "I won't like to leave until the roof is done."

"I'll finish the roof tomorrow," Fíli said, swallowing his last hot bite of supper.

For a moment no one answered him while the old couple took slow deliberate bites. Then the old man wiped the corners of his mouth with his thumb and said, "You know, I had a thought to get another bull, if I could find it, when we go to town." He looked at the old woman with something in his hidden crinkled eyes.

She licked her lips delicately. "If you can find one, then I suppose that would be all right."

Fíli knew, should have known, this was a heavy moment, a fragile moment, but he couldn't wait. "And if I finish the roof tomorrow? Can you finish shearing and washing?"

"We have a good amount of wool this year." He was still looking at the old woman.

"So you think it will take more than a day? I might be able to finish the roof early and help washing, get things ready around the house."

"We'll be ready soon enough. There's no hurry."

But there was, for Fíli. The next day he stabbed his fingers with the splintered ends of straw trying to rush through each bundle. And he broke the hazel twigs again and again tying the bundles to the roof. At the end of the day, he'd gotten less done than even was typical, and he was so angry at himself he couldn't eat, much less sleep.

Neither had the old man finished with the sheep, though the wagon was already piled high with rolled bundles of wool. He said he needed Fíli to help him finish tomorrow, and then the two of them could finish the roof and Fíli could go to their neighbor's to collect the ox after that.

Fíli felt sick to his stomach that night and the next day, bundles of wool draped across his arms and the hottest sun of the season bearing down on his face and shoulders, he grew dizzy, his vision blotted, he saw the silver flash before him.

He caught his breath on his knees, with the wool spilled, spread out several feet in front of him.

When he got to his feet, he told the old man he had to leave. He would go get the ox, but he had to leave.

"Where is your patience?" the old man said. He was searching Fíli's eyes, his own pale and the whites shot through with a red spiderweb, deep wrinkles spreading into his temples. Fíli felt the old man's fingers wrapped around his arm, and his hummingbird beating heart stilled and sunk into his stomach. He saw, out of the corner of his eye, the old woman watching from the door.

"Sorry," he said, easing his arm out of the old man's grip.

"There's plenty of time," the old man said. "This is as early as we've got the wool ready to go to market before. The ewes won’t be lambing for a month."

Fíli looked down at his boots.

"What is the matter?" the old woman asked, walking out of the doorframe.

He couldn't look at her, but he thought, well maybe now at least she wouldn't be disappointed when he left. Maybe she would be relieved, after what he was about to tell her. Maybe she would even tell him to go ahead and leave, not watch him from the window while he walked away.

But probably not. They were strong, the old couple was, but they couldn't do it on their own, and they couldn't replace him in time to get the wool to market. They were dependent on him and they thought he was good and strong like they were.

The shells of his ears burned. Like Kíli used to think he was.

"What’s wrong?" she repeated. Her hand was suddenly on his shoulder, her round soft face and wispy silvering hair illuminated in the morning light, and something about her dark eyes and the curve of her brow, the unsure crease in her lower lids--

He bit his lip. He'd never been sent by the gods, not anywhere, not to anyone.

"I told you about my brother," he said.

She nodded, stretching a bit of wool long between her fingers.

"And I told you about the last town we were in, working for the smith."

Her eyes were still big and expectant, open.

"Well, we got on fine, there, really. For a while. We got in a fight one night." He could hear the crash when the table flipped over.

The old woman kept stretching the wool.

"I don't know what I was thinking. They said some things.” Fíli held his hands tight in front of him to keep from sticking his fingers in his mouth to chew on his hangnails. “I went too far. I hurt someone." He cleared his throat. "Badly." He shrugged. It was hard for him, to tell the story straight. He did not want the word "kill" to come out of his mouth, not to her. But he told the truth, even if it didn't feel like it, "I don't know what happened to him. We left right away. I never should have let my brother go--get away from me. But I had to do something and he wouldn't come with me. Now, I'm worried about him. I put him in danger and now I don't even know where he is. I have to find him. He wanted to go to into town, but I couldn't."

"You thought someone would follow you there." She nodded. The fleece was becoming thin yarn in her hands.

Fíli put his face in his hands. When she said it like that, his knees went, he struggled to stand up straight, his throat closing tight. He'd just let Kíli go, and if there were people looking for them, for him, they couldn't fail to find Kíli there. "I can't leave him there alone any longer," he said, his voice choked. "If he's still there at all."

"What will you do when you find him?" she asked. Her voice was quiet.

"I don't know. I just want to get him away from this."

"Do you think hiding is the best thing to do?"

That question confused him. He took his hand off his forehead and looked at her. Her head was cocked and her face was sad. "What do you think I should do?" he asked.

She shook her head. "Dear, I don't know what you did in the first place."


	4. Tooth and Nail

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 7/25: HEYYY AGAIN SORRY it's taking forever I am so off my promised schedule, but it WILL BE UP TOMORROW. No matter how painful it is to me. :(
> 
> 7/22: HEY Y'ALL sorry for anyone who was checking for updates yesterday. Chapter 5 is taking me a lot longer than anticipated to get ready for posting. I'll get it up soon as I can. If it's any consolation, it should be a longer than usual chapter.

After that, the old man told him he could go first thing in the morning to the neighbor's. The old man didn't really look at him; he kept his focus on the ground in front of him and licked his lips.

Fíli went to bed feeling small and stupid and it was a long time before he heard the old woman's snores sound from across the cottage.

The next day, he went to the neighbor's with a sack of wool slung across his shoulder, and when he got back to the old couple's farm that night, with the neighbor's ox trailing on a lead behind him, he said, "Are we going first thing in the morning?"

The old couple nodded. They seemed older. He guessed they'd realized he wasn't their dead son, after all.

But the next morning, the old woman sent them off warmly, with packs of food and reminders not to get stuck in the mud. While she pulled her husband's coat tight around him and gave him a goodbye kiss, Fíli climbed up into the wagon. But she grabbed his hand and told him to come back down. So he did, and she wrapped her arms around him and kissed him on the cheek. And she said, "Thank you for helping us. I wish I could help you, too. I hope you find your brother, and I hope everything works out for you. There's nothing worse than a problem you can't fix."

Fíli felt his eyes well up and put his knuckle in his mouth. He just nodded to her frowning face and followed the old man up into the wagon.

They were taking several yearling lambs with them and they had to trot alongside the wagon. They got tired sometimes, crying and lagging, and Fíli had to hold them in his arms, each alternately. Once, Fíli asked if the man still wanted to get a bull to bring back to the farm.

The old man didn't answer for a while, and when he did it was with a shake of his head and a, "No. No, I don't think we're ready for that, yet," quietly. Fíli wanted to ask how they could keep getting milk from Flower and Sunshine if they didn't, but the answer somehow scalded, and he kept quiet.

They got to town that afternoon. It was busy and bustling and the lambs were scared of the noise. Fíli jumped down from the wagon and took their leads in his hands so they would stop trying to pull out of them.

This was market season and everyone from the countryside had come to set up in the muddy square. The old man was laughing and waving to people, clearly enjoying the crowd.

Fíli agreed with the lambs. He wasn't used to crowded spaces. It was noisy and it was all he could do to keep the barefoot children running about from knocking over the crying lambs.

"Don't worry, it's not long," the old man said, lighting a pipe from the back of the wagon. He told Fíli to leave the lambs with him and take wool around to those with whom the old man had standing deals. He traded a bag of wool for a sack of goose down one place, at the next he got a little purse of coins, and on and on, until he was almost out of wool.

The last place on the list—not coincidentally—was the smithy, and the streets around the shop were packed. He turned to every shouting voice looking for that silver flash, every trail of dark hair that whipped past him he followed until he caught a glimpse of the wrong nose or the bitter whiff of the wrong body odor.

When he finally came to the smithy, he didn't know whether he could go in. It was small, outside of it chickens squawked and rusty farm equipment leaned on the walls. He didn't hear the ring of hammer on anvil or smell the sharp scent of fire and iron.

He pushed the door open to find the inside empty and cold.

The wool, he set down by the door and forgot, calling out to no answer. The fire was out and Fíli didn't see any evidence that there had been any work done there at all that day. He was about to barge into the back, overturning tools and still calling for his brother, when he heard a loud laugh just outside the window and the front door banged open.

Fíli froze.

The man who'd just come inside was nearly two feet taller than he was, broad and blonde. He had a jug of ale in hand a smile half-hidden behind a thick red beard.

"Oh, hello there," he said. "Who are you?" He swayed and set the jug down on the floor near the bag of wool.

"I’m Fíli. I brought your wool."

"Oh, thank you. Pleasure to meet you." The smith nodded in appreciation and said he had the tools the old man needed. Then he looked Fíli up and down and said, "You must be related to the Dwarf I had working for me."

"Had?" Fíli asked. "He's not here anymore?"

"Are you his brother? I think he mentioned he had a brother."

"Yeah, that's me. Where is he?"

The smith had his back to him. "Would you like an ale?"

"Yes. What happened to him?"

"Well, as I recall it--" The smith squinted hard as he poured a mug for Fíli. "You happened." He grinned. "A week or so ago, he said he was going to go find you. Up on a farm somewhere. He didn't find you, did he?"

"No." Fíli took a big gulp of ale. "No. He left a week ago?"

"Just about. Maybe you missed him on the road?"

Fíli was out the door by the time the smith called after him, "What about the tools?"

In the street, Fíli shoved people out of the way and pushed in front of rolling carts, leaving drivers screaming until he got to the old man and his wagon.

"Here." He unloaded all of his exchanges into the rapidly emptying wagon. "I've got to go. I need any pay you can give me now."

"Slow down," the old man said. He looked to have been in the middle of a negotiation with a young mother and her tow-headed toddler.

Fíli didn't care. "I need to get a pony. Do you know where to find one?"

"Now, I don't--"

"Never mind, I'll find it myself. Look, I'll just take the coins I got and a couple of bags of wool. I don't care about the rest."

"Fíli, what is the problem?"

"Sorry."

In the market, it didn't take him too long to find someone willing to sell a cart pony. It did take everything he'd earned, his coat, and two of the carved beads in his hair to buy it. Even then, the pony was fat and past its prime, and Fíli had to lead it to the outskirts of town because it was scared to go through crowds.

Once they were out of town, Fíli got it going at what appeared to be its fastest clip, a pace only slightly faster than he himself could run. Going at that rate, and riding through sunset and half the night, Fíli came up on the small village he and Kíli had stayed one night when Kíli demanded it.

He knew the pony needed rest, he knew it would collapse before it got any further, but he couldn't stop. He found a drunk man in the tavern who agreed to trade his own pony for Fíli's and Fíli's fine pair of Dwarven throwing knives. He prayed Thorin and his ma never found out about it--about any of this--and set out again.

The drunk man guessed he could get to the next town by dawn on the new pony, but the drunk man was wrong.

The new pony was the opposite of the first. Its ribs and withers stuck out and its legs seemed too brittle to struggle to a pace any faster than a mincing trot. Fíli worried he was too heavy for it. His feet dangled past its knees, his toes could drag the tall grass. By dawn, he recognized the place where the long hill by the road had flattened out and they'd had to go further afield to make their way.

Now, he was just the road. Straight down the road.

He reckoned he was only a few hours out now on pony-back. And when the pony started to slow and stumble, he left it there and continued the rest of the way on foot.

It began to rain, grew as dark as it had been that night, and he missed his coat. He still had his hood to draw up around his face, but it didn't keep the rain from slipping past his collar and rolling down his bare back. He was cold and his boots slipped on the muddy road.

By noon he smelled the thin plumes of smoke over the crest of the next hill, and soon he could nearly hear the hammers in the forge.

He was thankful then for the rain. No one was out in the streets and Fíli managed to slip straight through to the smithy.

He didn't expect the smith to be happy to see him, but the man working the forge wasn't even the smith. He was a small, skinny adolescent with a goofy grin and he seemed to be focused solely on the smelting process at the moment.

Fíli walked through the door and readjusted his hood to shade his face. “Hi.” He knocked on the wall.

"Hi." The kid's grin focused on him.

"Where's the smith?" Fíli asked.

"Oh. Sick." The boy nodded.

He nodded back. "Who are you?"

"His apprentice."

"Apprentice."

"Yes." The boy nodded. Fíli noticed a pimple near bursting on his brow.

"Well. Maybe you can help me. I'm looking for someone the smith--your boss--knows. Maybe he's said something about him. He's about my height, dark hair--"

"A Dwarf?"

Fíli hesitated, but he guessed that part was obvious. "Yes."

"Oh, well, I know he used to have two Dwarves who worked for him, before they disappeared one night."

Fíli's breath was quickening, but he asked, "Anything else?"

"Well." The boy paused. "One of them came back."

Fíli forgot to speak. He stood in the doorway with his head spinning, his eyelids heavy, and the boy asked, "Are you okay?"

"Where is he?" He steadied himself on the doorframe.

The boy shrugged, smile on. "What's it worth to you?"

Fíli pulled the rest of the beads out of his hair and the ornately carved pipe out of his pocket.

"They haven't done anything to him. Yet." The boy put the items in his pocket.

"And where is he?"

"Where do you think?"

Fíli wanted to wrap his hands around this boy's neck and squeeze until the pimple on his brow splattered all over the room.

"I oughta charge you more for being so dense. Honestly, the smith made all the bars and locks for the lock-up. You used to work here, you should know that." The boy laughed. "Oh, yeah, and what do you have so I won't tell everyone in town you're here looking for your brother?"

He gave the boy the axes that fit in his boots. He couldn't see the boy in front of him anymore, wasn't aware enough of him to be angry.

He had just turned around, shaking, trying to stop himself from shaking, holding his arms, when something hit him in the back.

He fell forward and the boy fell on top of him, overbalanced by the heavy hammer in his hands.

It was instinct that, despite the splintered sensation in his spine--that same spot where he'd fallen against the bar that night--he grabbed the boy by the neck and forced him down on the ground, that Fíli ended up on top of him, wrenching the hammer out of his hands.

In a moment, Fíli could have brought the hammer down. It was heavy in his hand, too heavy, it needed, wanted to come down, and Fíli, the only thing he could see was the pimple on the boy's brow, he knew how the boy's blood would feel on his hands, he smelled his sweat already, bittersweet. And he saw the silver flash retreating down the hill before him.

The boy screamed, a noise that shot up Fíli's back and set the fine hairs on his body on end. He fell back, dropped the hammer down at his side, listened to it strike, felt its metal reverberations shaking on his knee.

He got to his feet. The boy was screaming for help and Fíli popped him hard between the eyes before he left. He hoped, he thought he'd moved quickly enough to beat the attention the boy had drawn.

But there were bodies in the street, dark bodies, all of them converging on the smithy, all of them with bobbing lamps by their sides, their hands illuminated on the handle of silhouetted blunt weapons.

He opened and closed his fist around nothing. He slipped in the wet muddy street and he couldn't see in the darkness, couldn't see a hole to slip through. He retreated until the smithy wall was pressed against his back.

With the dark bodies closing in from every side, yelling in words he could not understand, he knew there wasn't anywhere for him to go.

He kept his fists held out in front of him, but he didn't want to die in the street. He didn't want to die that day without seeing Kíli again.

So when they reached him, he came off the wall and put himself in the middle of a circle of swinging lamps. Blinded, he didn't have to try to fight. The first blow to the back of his head felt like a hard wet kiss that forced him to his knees. The second knocked him clean out before he ever hit the ground.


	5. Dead Skin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH MY GOD I'm so sorry it took me forever to get this chapter ready.
> 
> Anyway remember how I told y'all the explicit label was for later well LATER IS NOW. So if you don't want to read some incestuous porn then... well actually you can just skip this chapter after like the first 1500 words. Posting slash always makes me uncomfortable. Anyway this chapter is basically a sinkhole for gushy feelings.

He thought it was only for a second.

When he opened his eyes, he was still struggling to keep his knees under him, he could still feel the mud slipping under his fingers.

But the noises were different.

He noticed that first, with his vision cartwheeling. It was loud, it was clanging metal and scraping, bickering voices melting into one rumbling shout.

He got his knees under him and coughed, his hands braced against the dirt ground--floor. It was echoes, cleaving together, bouncing off close-set walls. He bore down on his knees and his stomach lurched. He threw up and the noise of him retching came back on his ears with all the rest.

When he felt hands curling around his shoulders, he jerked himself free and threw his fists out toward the pressure.

His fist connected with a chest, with a dirty chest covered by a torn dirty shirt.

He smelled his own vomit and wet molding straw. But suddenly, he also smelled something metallic, something hot and molten. Something that made him reach out in the dark with his burning hand.

His brother took it and pulled him forward, pulled him up into his dirty concave chest.

Fíli heard himself sob and felt his fists knot into Kíli's shirt, inhaled deeply against Kíli's neck and under the dirt he smelled the hot precious metals surging just under his skin. Because this was Kíli, there was no doubt, this was Kíli, Kíli, Kíli.

When Kíli pulled back, Fíli's hands found his face and his thumbs rubbed under his wet eyes. Kíli's eyes weren't meeting his. They jumped all over him, scattered, up and down.

"I'm okay," he tried to say, but he didn't know. His words didn't sound right, even to him. Kíli's face was right in front of him, but he felt it slipping away, like his hands on Kíli's face were the only thing keeping him there.

He swallowed hard and he knew Kíli's mouth was moving but only a throbbing thrum reached Fíli's ears.

Kíli pulled Fíli's hands away. He put his face right in front of Fíli's.

Fíli felt his eyelids sagging, but Kíli grabbed his chin and forced his head up.

Fíli didn't know what Kíli was saying, or why. He knew that he felt horrible and sick, and he thought that he felt horrible and sick because here Kíli was, after what Fíli had done to him, and Fíli wasn't helping him, wasn't even understanding what he meant to be saying.

He struggled to sit up, pushing Kíli's hands off him and putting his own hands up to his head. He couldn't shake the cobwebs, he couldn't focus. He felt like he'd just woken up from a long nap and couldn't come out of the world of half-dreams.

He shook his head and looked up at Kíli, waving his hand at him, he didn't know, maybe to say, "don't worry," or "give me a minute."

Kíli grabbed his hand and held it between his two palms. He pulled Fíli to him and turned him around so his back was pressed against Kíli's chest, his head propped up under Kíli's chin.

Kíli kept talking to him, kept asking him questions and grabbing his chin, slapping his face, forcing him to stay awake.

He didn't know how long it took him to understand. All he could focus on, all he could hold onto was that, here was his brother. He had found him. And now he had to stay awake.

Kíli's voice was continuous in his ear. And he remembered sitting on the straw in the cool morning on the farm, missing that breath, missing how it made the shell of his ear hot and how the little curly hairs around his temples waved in it. Kíli's breath on his ear. Kíli's hand clamped around his. Kíli's heart beating fast against his back.

Kíli asked him what happened and he remembered the swinging circle of lamps, falling in the mud. Kíli asked him what he was doing here and he knew, he knew he'd come to this village of men to find Kíli. Which he had. Which he'd done and that made him breathe deeply.

He asked Kíli where they were.

Kíli laughed. "We're in the village lock-up," he said, taking his hand out of Fíli's and wrapping his arms tight around Fíli's chest.

That sounded familiar to Fíli. He chuckled because Kíli had.

"I guess you were right to get us out of town," Kíli said quietly. Fíli felt Kíli press his lips against the back of his head.

He tried to clear his throat to say something, but Kíli kept talking. "This wouldn't be happening if I'd listened to you, if I'd stuck with you when you wanted to go to that farm."

"They would've loved you," Fíli said. He was referring to the old couple, his farmers, but he didn't know how to explain that properly and it didn't seem like Kíli was listening, anyway.

"I was just so angry, because of what you did. Because it just took us farther and farther away from home after we'd been getting on so well. Do you know?" He sat up straighter and his voice suddenly sounded urgent. "Did you know that boy--that man--didn't die? He was just blinded. You beat his eyes out." He nearly giggled.

Fíli could still feel his knuckles every time they ground down on those eye sockets.

"I shouldn't have said you killed him."

Fíli tried to straighten himself. He was feeling lighter, clearer. He wanted to say he shouldn't have done something, and he guessed he shouldn't have. He wished they'd never been in that tavern, never met those men. But he didn't see how they couldn't have fought them, once what happened happened. So what he said instead was, "What's going to happen to us?"

Kíli buried his face in the nape of Fíli's neck. He muttered, "I don't know," right against a tangle of hair and a patch of skin.

Fíli took a deep breath and said, "What happened to you?"

"I went to find you."

"Oh. I came to find you, too. The smith, your smith said you'd been gone a week."

Kíli laughed a melancholy laugh. "I was gonna go to that farm," he said. "I thought you were never gonna come to me. I know you never apologize."

Fíli laughed.

"I got out of town." He paused to readjust his grip on Fíli's chest. "I didn't have anything. Barely. I was walking, and I don't even know how they recognized me. I had my hood up, I remember, cos it was the afternoon, and I was trying to keep the sun out of my eyes. And I heard riders behind me. Behind me, like they must have already been to town. I thought they were just coming down the road, so I stepped out of the way, but they kept slowing down behind me. So I took the knives, you know, the ones I keep on my sides here." He kind of shrugged and Fíli's shoulders went up and down with his. "And I turned around. I got one of them in the side before they got me." He laughed. "That's--well, you can't see it, but they beat me up for that. I didn't cut him very deep. But I wondered why they didn't kill me. I guess they thought maybe I would help them get you. The one I didn't get—his horse stepped on my chest."

Fíli said, "Oh," and tried to sit up, off Kíli's chest, imagining the black bruise swelling in the shape of a hoof.

"No, no." Kíli held him down. "It didn't get me good. But it knocked the wind out of me. It was embarrassing. They tied me up, tied my hood over my head."

Fíli shuddered. He knew he wasn't sorry, not really, for what he'd done, because if he ever got the chance, he'd do worse to those men.

Kíli mistook his shudder for a laugh, maybe. "Don't make fun of me. You should've seen how they brought you in here."

Fíli was curious, though. He closed his eyes hard and tried to remember. "How did it happen?"

"What, just now?" Kíli couldn't stop laughing. "I heard it from a mile away. That slot, that little window up there, I heard it coming through there and the cracks in the door. I don't know what I was expecting, but not. Not what happened. When the door opened, when I saw you." He stopped. He pressed his warm palms against Fíli's chest. Fíli heard him sniff. "I knew, I guess, I must've known you weren't dead, because why would they bring you here? But you looked so still. You just sagged between them--there were these two men holding you up and they--I wanted to kill them." Kíli jerked behind him. "They threw you in here. And then I heard you throw up." Fíli felt a drop fall onto his scalp. "Most beautiful retching I ever heard."

"When your smith told me you'd left a week before I got there, I thought you were probably dead," Fíli said. He'd never said that to himself at the time, but he'd felt it. It almost felt good to say, now, when he could feel Kíli's warm arms around him, heartbeat on his back. It jiggled something loose in his chest and let his shoulders fall back.

"How do you feel?" Kíli asked.

"Better. My head hurts." Fíli sat up, breaking Kíli's grip. His legs were numb and his back was aching. He touched the side of his head gently, but even brushing it with his fingertips hurt. He didn't even try to feel the lump. He could tell his hair was stiff and brittle, caked with dried and drying blood.

He turned around and faced Kíli, intending to do now what he hadn't been able to earlier and see what they'd done to his brother.

It was shadowy, dark in the lock-up, and Fíli had to lean in and squint. Kíli drew back, at first, but Fíli told him to stay still. He put his hands in Kíli's hair and ran them through, his fingers tangling near Kíli's scalp, feeling for bumps, watching for Kíli's flinch. There was one on the back of his head, where his skull ended, but Kíli said it didn't hurt anymore. "That's where they got me off my feet," he said, imitating an uppercut.

His face, Fíli had to pull close to see what was just shadow and dirt. He kept his hands in Kíli's hair and held his head still with his thumbs and wrists pressed on Kíli's jawline. He felt Kíli's shallow breath on his face while he traced the lines of Kíli's bruised cheekbone with his eyes, ran the pad of his thumb over Kíli's dry cracked lips. One of his eyes was still swollen, Fíli saw the struggle, the twitch in Kíli's temple as he tried to keep the eye wide.

Fíli's hands moved down Kíli's neck, the depression in his collarbone. He wanted to see where the horse had stepped on him. He took the hem of Kíli's shirt in his hands and pulled it up. Kíli took it out of his hands and pulled it over his head himself.

"It was here." Fíli traced the vaguely horseshoe-shaped bruise already fading on Kíli's chest.

"Yeah." Kíli nodded. He leaned forward into Fíli, one hand on Fíli's collar and one his chin, forcing his gaze up from his chest.

Fíli thought maybe he was going to say something. Kíli wanted people to look at him when he talked. But he didn't say anything. He kissed Fíli. He brought their lips together and pulled Fíli's collar forward.

Fíli's head felt empty again and he didn't move his lips, he only felt Kíli's, hot and rough, cracked on his.

Then Kíli pulled back, and with his forehead pressed against Fíli's, his hot breath, said, "Sorry."

Fíli had to struggle to find his hand, his fingers still folded against Kíli's bruise. He moved them up to Kíli's neck, his thumb stretching under his jaw and his fingers against Kíli's jugular, feeling his pulse throbbing, quickening. He didn't know what to say, so he didn't.

He pulled Kíli's lips back down on his and this time, he moved into the kiss. he let his lips part and the corners of his mouth soften.

Kíli's lips against his were softer wet.

Fíli barely realized he was pressing forward until he felt the clammy stone wall collide with his knuckles and the back of Kíli's head. He drew back, maybe just surprised and Kíli gasped, a heavy breathless noise.

Fíli's face grew hot and he nearly pulled away, ended the moment.

But his knee, his leg was between Kíli's and he felt a pulse against his thigh. And he looked at Kíli's face and his bruised lids were half-lowered, his lips hanging open.

Fíli bit his own lip, bit it hard until he winced, but he didn't pull away. Kíli's chest came up to meet his and Kíli's eyes looked down, his fingers plucked at the material of Fíli's shirt.

"What happened to your coat?" he asked, his voice laced with something heavy, close to cracking.

Fíli almost laughed. He was glad for the opportunity to calm his heart, but he didn't know that he could swallow, could clear his throat to respond. "Um," he said. Hard as it was to hold himself up over Kíli, it was harder still to shift or move back without his cock throbbing painfully.

"Um." He swallowed hard and he could feel his Adam's apple in his throat. "Well."

Kíli laughed, wild and giddy and raised his hips almost imperceptibly, just so Fíli could feel the bulge of his cock against his thigh.

Fíli nearly choked. "I um. I traded it. And my knives, axes, the beads in my hair. Went through a couple of ponies, too."

"But not the clasp." Kíli reached around to the back of Fíli's head.

"No. Not the clasp." He looked down. "I would have, though. If I needed to. If I needed to, I would've died."

"Stop." Kíli pushed him back, palm on his chest. "You got to check me over. You got to see that I'm okay, but I haven't looked at you, yet. So." He twisted his fingers in Fíli's shirt.

The fabric suddenly felt heavy, thick on his shoulders.

"Take your shirt off."

Fíli did. Kíli nearly ripped it, pulling it over Fíli's braids. He threw it in the corner, put his hands on either side of Fíli's ribcage. Kíli's hands, like his lips, were rough and hard. Just like Fíli's. Broad and strong. They held onto his shoulders, wrapped around his wrists, pulling him forward. They warmed the back of his neck, tucked his loose hair behind his ears and soothed the places he felt most vulnerable, felt the most pain: the soft space above his clavicle, the sore places on his back, between his shoulder blades, his lower stomach, Kíli’s hands drew across that skin around to his sides, the ticklish spaces above his hipbones.

He reached for Kíli, but Kíli pushed his hand away. “I’m not done,” he said, clamping his hand around Fíli’s bicep to hold him still. His other hand, still on the spot above Fíli’s hipbone tightened, and Fíli laughed, leaning away from his grip.

“Hold still,” Kíli said, and Fíli wanted to respond, to protest, but he thought if he opened his mouth, if he heard his own voice he’d ruin everything, he’d lose the tingling dreamy concussed feeling in his head and realize that this, in this blind locked room was corporeal reality. And he wouldn’t know what that meant.

So he grabbed Kíli's neck and forced him back against the wall, his free hand reaching for the fastenings on Kíli's trousers. He could feel Kíli's breath rush up his throat, the rumble of his moan under his fingers.

His fingers, the fingers on his other hand trembled but worked slowly, surely and Kíli lifted his hips and his trousers slid down over them.

His cock was hard and thick and even in the dim light Fíli could see it was already slick, he could smell salty heat in the air. He grabbed Kíli's hips, pulled them up, and Kíli fell with a thump on the mildewed straw under them.

"Wait! W--" Kíli gasped, his hand coming down on Fíli's shoulder, unable to finish his sentence as Fíli's mouth closed around his cock.

Kíli yanked on Fíli's hair and Fíli's tongue moved up the underside of Kíli's cock, tracing the vein from base to tip, finishing with the salty-bitter taste already coating his mouth.

He let his tongue fall down in his mouth and closed his lips tight over the tip of Kíli's cock. Kíli’s body rocked up and down under him and he grabbed him by the hipbones and forced him down, held him still on the ground.

His tongue slipped through the slit on the head of Kíli’s cock and Kíli tried to force his hips up. Fíli’s thumbs dug into the soft flesh at the juncture of his legs and body.

Kíli's hands tightened in his hair, his knuckles digging into Fíli's scalp. His voice filled the room, low and rumbling and unintelligible until, Fíli's mouth down his length, he said, "I love you. I love you. Oh, fuck. I love you."

Fíli laughed around his cock and in response Kíli thrust his hips up and this time Fíli let him, let his cock bump against the back of Fíli's mouth.

With Fíli's fingers curling around his hipbones and his cock sliding down Fíli's tongue, Kíli came.

His cum dripped on Fíli's lip and Fíli licked it off. It was heady, like beer foam on his upper lip.

Fíli sat back on his heels, his face hot and his eyes watery and Kíli fell down on the straw, gasping, arms over his head.

Fíli leaned forward, not interested in letting him catch his breath. He put a knee by either of Kíli's hips and pinned Kíli's wrists over his head with one hand, the other on his neck. Kíli's chest rose up. Fíli pushed down on his neck and lowered himself over his brother until their chests pressed together.

"How am I supposed to reach your cock if you won't let go of my wrists?"

Fíli didn't really feel like talking. He rose up on his knees, pulling Kíli up with him by the wrists, and then got to his feet. He put Kíli's hands on the front of his trousers.

He sucked in his breath. Kíli's fingers undid the fastenings. His whole body felt weak already, but he set his jaw and planted his feet and tried to focus on his breathing as Kíli's wet hot lips and the tip of his tongue first touched his cock.

He knotted his fingers in Kíli's hair and turned his face toward the dripping ceiling, jaw open, scared if he looked down, if he saw Kíli's face, his mouth moving up and down the length of his cock, saw the flash of his teeth under his swollen lips against his tender skin, he wouldn't last.

But it didn't take long for him to forget about that when Kíli's tongue hit the base of his cock and fingers brushed his balls. His fists tightened in Kíli's hair, and he could feel the swollen spot on Kíli’s hair under his knuckles. He saw in his head again the black bruise blooming on Kíli’s chest, imagined the steam from the horse’s snout, the thick dust around its hoof as it came down on Kíli’s ribcage. Saw the black bruise unfurling its petals over his brother’s heart. He loosened his fist and smoothed Kíli’s matted hair down under his fingers, brought his hand to rest on the back of Kíli’s neck while the hum of Kíli’s voice vibrated down the length of his cock.

He looked down to see Kíli looking up at him, and when he came it was on Kíli's collarbone and the fading purple of his bruise.

Fíli sank down to his knees, arms wrapped around Kíli's neck for support. Kíli's hands went to his ribcage to hold him up.

Once he caught his breath, Fíli lay down in the straw and sat wiping his chest off with his shirt.

Fíli was halfway to sleep when Kíli said, "Well, what do you think it'll be?"

"What?" He yawned and rolled over onto his side, his back to Kíli.

"You know. Fire? Water?"

"Oh." He covered his face with the hand.

"Do you think they'll try us together or separately?"

Knuckles dug in his eye, Fíli said, "I won't let them touch you."

Kíli laughed. "I don't think you have a choice."

Fíli didn't answer that. He didn't want to admit that he'd got them into this and now he couldn't do anything to protect his little brother. Every bruise on his body, Fíli may as well have hit him himself.

"We'll be fine, I think," Kíli said. He pulled Fíli's hand away from his face and laced their fingers together. "You know what I think they'll do?"

Fíli shook his head and worked his hand out of Kíli’s.

Kíli pushed on his shoulder. "I think they'll give us trial by combat. You know, we're royalty, technically."

"They don’t know that. If they were going to try us like nobility, they wouldn't have us in this moldy village lock-up." Fíli pulled pieces of straw away from the corner of his mouth.

Kíli lay down and put his face against Fíli's neck. "I don't know, maybe they'll just put us in the stocks or something."

Fíli laughed. "I think I'd rather they try to drown me."

"Don't say that," Kíli mumbled. "I don't want them to drown you. Or me, for that matter."

When Fíli didn't respond, Kíli continued. "I really think it'll be trial by combat. Think about it, it's appropriate. We can beat them"

Fíli groaned. "Well, they managed to get us locked up even when we were armed. How good can we possibly do?"

"I don't know what your excuse is, but I got ambushed. If it was a fair fight, I could beat any man in this village. Any man at all."

"You shouldn't be involved in this at all. Any of this."

"Don't be dumb. We got in the fight together. Like you said, you're just the one who finished it."

"Did I say that?"

"Maybe they'll just make us fight the blind man."

Fíli groaned and Kíli sighed and draped his arm over Fíli's chest.

"I'm going to sleep now," Fíli said.

"Wait." Kíli rolled over and propped himself up, an elbow on either side of Fíli's head. He squinted hard into Fíli's eyes. "Your pupils look okay," he said.

"I can't tell if you're being serious with this examination." Fíli turned his face away and Kíli slapped him on the cheek.

"You're fine. I'm sure."

Fíli laughed, then sighed, something that all merged into one sound and motion from his throat. With Kíli's warm hand holding onto the side of his neck, he did fall asleep, his eyes heavy and sunk in his head.

He was nearly gone when he felt Kíli's lips press down on his.


	6. Black Eyes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well this one is short but at least it's on time.
> 
> I love bloody cartoonish violence. Blood and dirt and crunchy body parts.

The next morning, nothing happened. Fíli woke up and watched the light move through the little window high above his head.

When Kíli woke up, Fíli asked him what he thought was going on.

Kíli shrugged.

"Where’s breakfast?" Fíli was joking, but Kíli's face soured and Fíli wished he hadn’t said anything.

"They haven't fed me since I've been here," he said. He laughed but his mouth stayed slack and he pushed his hands through his matted hair, his eyes focused on something over Fíli’s shoulder.

"How long?"

"Um. I think this is the third day," he said. He rubbed his sunken eyes with the heels of his hands. "But it's not so bad. They fed me on the way back to town. Had to eat with my hands tied, though." He stuck his wrists together and mimed bringing a bite to his mouth. The way he kept trying to force his laughter out made Fíli's gut twist.

Fíli stood up and pushed his face against the covered slot in the door, maybe willing it to open. He pounded his fist on the door, gently, trying to relax his white knuckles.

There wasn't anything to do. He felt like he was choking on the stale moldy air in the lock-up. He could smell the fresh air outside through the cracks in the slot but couldn’t fill his lungs with it.

Kíli was still sitting down and Fíli heard him sigh. "Don't. Look, just relax. It's boring, but that's the worst of it. They'll do whatever they're going to do to us when they're good and ready. At least we can talk to each other now. They’ll do whatever they’re going to do to us to both of us—do it together."

"Yeah." Fíli nodded, still rapping the door with his knuckles.

"That’s all that matters to me," Kíli said. "I don't care what happened. What's happening."

Fíli turned around. Kíli was leaning on the wall with his legs half-hitched out in front of him, heels of his boots dug in the straw. His head was tilted back and he was looking at Fíli down his nose, through half-open eyes.

"So why don't you stop worrying, because you can't do anything about it, and just. I don't know. Come sit with me." He stuck his arm out toward Fíli.

Fíli stuck his fingers in his mouth and ripped off a hangnail. He turned and pressed his face to the slot, again, cupping his hands around his eyes and trying to see through the cracks. “What happened to ‘we can beat them’?”

“We can’t do anything before they decide it’s time.” Fíli listened to Kíli groan and shift behind him and thought how it really wasn't fair, beyond everything, if they really were planning on trying them by combat, that they hadn't fed Kíli for three days. He was sure the men they'd be fighting would be well fed.

He sat down and put his back on the door. That gave him some small amount of comfort, made him feel as though he had some modicum of power. At least now, if anyone opened the door, they'd have to go through him before they got to Kíli.

It happened suddenly.

He had been dozing and he woke to the sound of footsteps outside.

He struggled to his feet on his wobbly knees just as the key grated in the lock and the door opened.

He heard Kíli stir behind him and tried to make himself big in the doorway, squaring his body and holding one arm back, palm out to his brother as if to keep him away from them.

He didn't stand a chance.

*

Fíli had a sword in his hand and he could barely see the men across the mud-and-dirt town square. They were big, broad, their boots churned in the dust like bulls ready to charge or maybe just like men unsure of what to do with their bodies.

They were village men. There were three of them, for the three that had been in the tavern that night. The blind man himself had chosen them. Fíli had seen the blind man, finally, his missing eyeballs.

He wasn't sure if the trial had started yet. The three men were milling around, just like he and Kíli were, on the other side of the village square.

He didn't think the trial was meant to be a public spectacle, but it was. There were faces piled in every window lining the square. Men and children lurking in alleyways.

The men across the square big as they were, you might even think they looked nervous. Their shoulders rolled, they looked back and forth to one another, faces obscured by dust roiling in the wind.

Those men in the tavern that night hadn't looked nervous. They'd looked cocky and gap-toothed and pimple-faced, confident in their height to protect them until Kíli hit them across the face, Fíli flipped the table over and grabbed that man by the hair. Then they'd—that pimpled, now blind man, anyway--had looked scared.

No, maybe not then. Maybe not until Fíli had him on the ground, the first time his sharp knuckles dug into the soft flesh of his eyeball.

He had been smaller than the men across the square. All of them had been smaller. The men must've been two feet taller than they were.

A foot-and-a-half.

And the dust lifted off the mud and blew across the square in swirling clouds.

Fíli shaded his eyes, felt Kíli move and mutter behind him. The dust stuck on his eyeballs and he fell into moments of startling blackness in which he saw nothing but the man's bloody eyes on the ground, the ground splattered with blood, his knuckles smeared with blood, the man's face bubbling up with blood.

When he came out of his blindness, the men were closer, their swords were up. They were moving, circling, looking for the time to charge, and when Fíli put his hand out to find Kíli, he wasn't there.

The sword was too heavy for Fíli to hold with one hand and Kíli was out in front of him, now, he used Fíli's blindness to move in front of him.

He ran after Kíli, he needed to catch him up before they met in the middle.

The swords came down in a staggered cascade.

Fíli saw them, but Kíli was in front of them.

His blindness came back.

He didn't see where the swords fell, but he felt himself move, felt his body coalesce, swarm through his tense and aching arms through his numb and shaking fingers into the hilt of his screaming sword.

He heard the howl of his sword hit another but the blindness was still on him. He felt Kíli's metal heat pressing near him--he had a different heat than any other person, Fíli, blind though he was, would always know Kíli's heat beside him, different from the heat, the mild unimpressive heat of any other person--and all he could do was cleave to that heat and guide his sword toward the biting and howling, throw himself toward the resistance he felt, the hard press coming up against him.

Every step he took away from Kíli, his heat faded and the putrid muddy deathly cold and blind feeling came in his nose and skin and his dead blind eyeballs.

He might question, later, that he might not have been blind, really blind. Maybe he just couldn't remember what he did see, like he wouldn't remember what came after.

If he had to guess what he saw, he would think it was red dust and flowing blood--or, more than that, before that, flashing steel. But if you asked him to describe the face of the man the back of whose knees he slashed out from under him, whose neck he cut open and whose blood coated his hands nearly making him lose his grip on his sword until the dust thickened it and made its sticky chunks into a kind of glue, or the man under whose ribcage he stabbed, he would only be able to tell you about the rushing whispers from the crowd, the feeling of his sword stuttering, rumbling in his hands caught on tangled entrails and bits of bone, the blind man's face, eye sockets swollen and smeared black and purple.

And if you asked him to describe the man who stabbed him in the stomach while he was still pushing on the blind man's chest with his boot, pulling his sword free, he would only be able to tell you about the swirling red hazy sunlit halo around Kíli's head when the man dropped in front of him and his sword fell with him. He could tell you everything about Kíli's face in that moment, magnified. His nostrils flaring with his deep labored breath, the tendons in his neck tense and veins surging, even his hair shaking. Fíli saw his fingers tremble when he dropped the sword, outstretched, reaching for something. Fíli could see him, hear it, the whispers from the village, the whispers too loud to be called that anymore, the whispers saying their names and then howling them.

And he saw Kíli's eyes widen before his own rolled back and he fell with the bodies.


	7. Tangled Hair

Later, he would think he'd dreamed while he was unconscious. He remembered feeling and seeing things like the fog lifting on a wet field at sunrise. Like the blind man's bloody stare in front of him, the tightness in his chest and coldness in his lungs when his eyes traced those broken eye sockets on the edge of the town square with the dust blowing between them. Like the coarse texture of Kíli's shirt, the softness in his chest on his horseshoe bruise, softness it seemed like Fíli's fingers could push right through, enter his ribcage and wrap his fist around his brother's beating heart so he could pump it himself if that beating ever stopped.

He dreamed of the loud hissing from the hidden crowd at the trial and the lonely lowing of Sunshine and Flower, of the wet smack on his forehead where Netta hit him with a pickled egg, the same feeling of his ma kissing his forehead like she did when he and Kíli left home the last time. The smell of molten metal lingering in Kíli’s hair, growing out from his roots.

*

He woke up but he didn't believe it. Whether they were dreams or memories, the images in his head faded into the dark world around him. The only perceptible change at first was that he was conscious of his breathing. That was because it hurt. It hurt in his ribs and chest and all the way down his side.

And his senses rushed back to him from that pain in his side. The soreness in his shoulders, his raw palms, the burn in his throat. He needed to cough but he was afraid of the pain. The pain was worse because in his dreams he never felt it.

It was that fear, that decision to suppress a cough that made him realize he was alive. He was alive when he might not have been. Before then he'd never thought he was dead. But now he knew he was alive and that he might no be for much longer.

When that came to him, his head felt surprisingly clear. He knew not to try to move. He was lying on his shoulder, his injured side in the air.

He called Kíli's name and tried to focus, to adjust his eyes to the vague dimness around him.

He was lying on a straw pallet. Much fresher straw than had been in the lock-up. The room was different, too dark, but there was a breeze hitting his face. He could make out the outline of the window and a curtain hanging over it.

He called Kíli's name again. He needed to see Kíli.

He heard boots on the floor and then Kíli was there.

Fíli didn't have to see him to know. He recognized his gait, that faint molten metal smell he even knew in his dreams.

"Hi." Kíli sat down on the floor beside him and put his hand on his shoulder. "You're awake."

Fíli was starting to feel hot. Even with the breeze on his face.

"Are you okay?"

Fíli put his hand out for Kíli to take and even that hurt. He wanted to laugh but he couldn't. He said, "Where are we?" and Kíli squeezed his hand.

"You keep asking that." He laughed. "Try really hard, and I bet you can figure it out." He brought Fíli's hand up to his mouth and pulled on Fíli's hangnails with his teeth.

Each one bit into his flesh but he was grateful for that little nipping pain. It focused his attention. He thought he recognized the place.

"We're at that farm," he said. "The old farmer and his wife. The old couple." He closed his eyes again. It hurt to keep them open and now that he'd seen Kíli, there was no reason for him to stay awake.

"Yes!" Kíli squeezed his hand until his fingers hardened and he felt Kíli bend down over him, felt Kíli's lips hot on his forehead. "You know I told you that about five times, do you remember?"

"No."

"It's been days now. You know."

"No." He didn't know, and he didn't even know if he believed it.

He felt Kíli's hand push back his hair. Kíli's body heat close to him was oppressive. He groaned and craned his neck away from Kíli, searching for cooler air. He wanted Kíli close to him but far away from his body. He wanted to be outside, where that cool breeze was coming from.

He didn't remember going to sleep, but he woke up with the light outside blinding him through the burlap curtain.

Kíli was there to put a damp rag on his forehead, to rub his shoulder, to put his hot palm on Fíli's neck and whistle quietly.

He remembered pieces of waking up the night before, which Kíli said was good. Better.

He watched flickers of Kíli's hands working on his bandages. It hurt. He smelled something bitter, the salve Kíli was putting on his wound.

Fíli clenched his jaw and knotted his fingers in Kíli's shirt. His knees knocked together.

Then it was later, and Kíli was coaxing him up into a sitting position. He felt the sweat running down his jaw and soaking into his shirt. Kíli hoisted him onto his shoulder.

"Can you sit up? Can you stay up?"

Fíli shook his head.

"Well, then. I need to get the old woman in here to help."

"Help how?"

Kíli laughed. "You need water. You need to eat."

"Nope. Can't do that." Fíli leaned heavily into his brother.

"You have to at least drink some water."

"Nah." But Kíli made sure he did. He must have, because Fíli knew he made him stand up, later, urinate in a pot. It was so hard it made him want to cry.

Then his head lay in Kíli's lap. He felt Kíli's fingers in his hair and he said, "Are you braiding?"

Kíli's laughter vibrated against his ear. "Do you want me to?"

"Yes."

"Your hair is dirty. It’s all knots."

Then later, but it didn't seem like much later, Fíli sat up, mostly on his own, just with Kíli's arm under his shoulders, and ate a spoonful of porridge.

"Don't spill it," Kíli said.

He did, a little bit.

"The fever's breaking, I think," Kíli called to someone in the other room.

Fíli couldn't see Kíli's smile, but he could feel it pressed into his cheek.

When he looked at the wound, he came to realize what had happened.

"So, I've been asleep," he said.

"Yes. Mostly." Kíli tried to guide the spoon in his hand to his mouth, he pushed it away.

"I'm fine."

"You're a lot better."

The porridge was not and his mouth felt dried up. "I'm not hungry."

"Yes, you are. You haven't eaten in days." Kíli rubbed his fingers over Fíli's protruding ribs and Fíli squirmed, suppressed a giggle and pushed him away.

He didn't have the strength to push him hard.

Eventually, threatened by the embarrassment of being held down and force fed, Fíli let Kíli fill up the spoon and hand it to him. He took on the responsibility of forcing the stuff down his throat on himself.

The next day he could stand up and walk outside to relieve himself. That evening, he put his hand on Sunshine's wet snuffling nose and she pushed back into his palm. And he felt good. Her wet nose was cool and the evening breeze had a slight, thrilling chill.

The day after that Kíli smiled when he came to the table for breakfast and later that afternoon, Kíli sobbed into his neck while Fíli held him up himself.

His face left wet trails on Fíli's skin.

Fíli felt dizzy, his arms wrapped around Kíli while Kíli leaned weak-kneed into him. All he could say was, "I'm sorry."

Two days later he was up in the morning milking Sunshine and Flower, talking to the old woman who cried over him nearly as hard as Kíli had. "Thank our maker we went to find you. My old man," she said, waving her handkerchief vaguely over her shoulder. "Thank the maker."

Later, when she wasn't crying, and Fíli was sitting inside with her trying to spin wool, she told him more. "Your brother told us they wouldn't help you in that village. They said if you died of your wounds, then you died. Then you were guilty."

"I'm still guilty." Fíli chuckled when he said it, looking down between his fingers at the spun wool the old woman was feeding him from the wheel, but his heart raced, too, the pain in his stomach sharpened. "I should've died. Shouldn't I?" He touched his stomach and felt the pain wave under his fingertips.

She shook her head. "You can't know these things." But he had the feeling he’d gotten away with something. He should have at least gone blind.

It was time to harvest the wheat and Fíli went into the field with a scythe. It wasn't until the sun was past its zenith and he was squinting into its glare that the pain in his stomach became unbearable. It was the twisting motion in his abdomen, back and forth, over the weighty tops of the wheat. He put his hand on his belly and pressed into the bandage with his fingers. He was feeling for blood but the bandage was already wet with sweat.

Kíli had kept near him all day. He saw Fíli slow down and he came to his side, lifted his shirt, and peeled back the bandage.

"You should go back," Kíli said, looking down at the gently oozing wound. He took the scythe out of Fíli's hand.

That night, the old woman gave him a glass of warm milk and honey and she insisted on making a cup for Kíli, too. In the end, they all, including the old man, had a cup. Fíli said he was sorry they were wasting the honey. The old woman laughed and said it wasn't a waste. When the old couple went to sleep, Fíli and Kíli sat outside, pipes in hand, looking up at the unfurled stars and listening to the couple snore from the nearby window.

"I wonder if this is what grandparents are like," Kíli said.

"Not our grandparents." Fíli laughed and smoke shot out of his nose, like a dragon.

Kíli nodded. "Well, it's nice."

Fíli reached out and took Kíli's hand in his. "It is. They are."

"It's so nice here." The breeze hit their faces and Fíli took a deep breath. "I wish I'd've come. When you wanted me to." Kíli shivered.

Fíli put his pipe down and his arm around Kíli's shoulder and when Kíli's head drifted back into the crook of his neck, his hair tickling Fíli's face. Fíli pressed his nose into Kíli's hair and let that molten scent, the scent of the Blue Mountains on the inside and something that had always been there, familiar but unnameable, flush his body out, clear everything inside his head and gut away, carry him somewhere far away and lonely.

Every day got hotter and longer and the nights short and still. Fíli led Flower and Sunshine around the threshing floor in circles until he was dizzy and they started to brew ale in casks behind the house. At night, sometimes now the old man sat outside with Fíli and Kíli to smoke pipes. He told them about how in the fall the families in the area came together. How the kids rolled casks of ale down the road.

How in that season sometimes they slept until the sun rose above the horizon.

One morning Kíli put his hand around Fíli's wrist and told him he was gaining weight. He poked Fíli's stomach and ran his fingers across Fíli's ribs.

"You'll get fat if we stay here," Kíli said, but the grin on his face froze and his eyes went far away when, Fíli thought, he realized what he'd said.

"No, I won't." Fíli pushed his hand away. "You'll see how much there is to do all the time. When I'm better--I mean all the way better--"

And there always was something to do, and sometimes that something was the still-cold lake without a ripple in its surface until, the dogs chasing them and barking at their heels, they splashed with their feet and shins and fell on their knees when the mud caught them by the ankles.

Fíli arched his back, stretched his stomach muscles, and the cold water drew gooseflesh across his fresh scar tissue and the long lingering oozing scab that true to his stubborn Dwarvish nature refused to heal.

When Kíli jumped on his shoulders and pushed his head underwater, he opened his eyes in the murky swirling water and something opened in his chest, something cavernous, and the water pressing on his eardrums sounded to him like distant hammer strokes.

He threw Kíli off his back and came up gasping for air with Kíli's laughter screaming behind him. The pounding in his chest was stronger, lasted far longer than his breathlessness.

Later, on the shore, their feet still stuck in the mud, Fíli wrung Kíli's hair out and his mouth opened and closed with something inarticulable on the tip of his tongue. Kíli leaned into his chest with his hot wet back and Fíli closed his mouth for good.

One day the old woman got it into her head that they need haircuts. Fíli had watched, before, the old woman with a pair of scissors in her hand shearing steely gray strands from the old man's head. Kíli blanched when she brought up the topic and Fíli choked on his bite of porridge, laughing.

The old woman looked hurt and Fíli felt bad for laughing, so he slapped his chest and cleared his throat and tried to explain. "We're Dwarves," he said and struggled to find the words with which to follow. He thought, and he could tell by the wide look on Kíli's face that he thought, too, that everything following that sentence was self-evident. "We're Dwarves and--" He pinched the end of his braid between his fingers. Kíli giggled. "We don't wear our hair short."

"Not unless we go bald." Kíli's laughter hit a pitch Fíli was sure he'd be embarrassed about.

Fíli forced the corners of his own mouth down. "But _we_ won't go bald," he said, casting his eyes over to Kíli, who had his hand over his mouth. "Our ancestors were kings. There could never be a bald king."

Kíli nearly dissolved, burying his face in his hands.

"Or beardless," Fíli was quick to add in a moment of fraternal wickedness.

Kíli stopped rocking back and forth and inhaled sharply.

Fíli turned back to the old woman. "I'm not joking, but it's not Kíli's fault. He's young yet. Our uncle--" He turned back to Kíli. "Thorin says his beard didn't grow in fully until he was in his 80s." Thorin didn't say that at all, but Fíli told Kíli he did, because he knew Kíli needed to hear it.

Now Kíli was smiling again at the idea of a beardless Thorin and Fíli grinned back at him, wiggling his eyebrows.

"Well," the old woman said, clucking her tongue, and Fíli jolted. He'd almost forgotten she was there. "I had no idea we had royalty in the house." And she stood up and swept her skirts back as she curtsied deep as her old knees would let her.

Fíli's face burned, but Kíli laughed when she said, "My liege," and "Maybe one day you can braid my hair like yours, then."

They hadn't spoken openly, to each other, let alone to anyone else, about their people and their family, about the place they couldn't quite call home in a long time.

That night, Fíli thought about what it would mean to go home, whether home was a stretch of empty road with a darkening horizon in front of them, or maybe, whether home was this place where Kíli's head rested on the pallet by his thigh, his eyeballs already moving rapidly through his closed lids and his slack mouth twitching almost imperceptibly. He thought about what he saw with his head underwater, the sun through the muddy swirl like the fierce flickering lights under the mountain. Under a mountain he'd never even seen but knew he'd smelled and touched and tasted, heard its dying echoes.

Things seemed clearer in the mornings, always. Clear air, clear water, it was all as clear as Flower's sweet sleepy eyes when he pressed his lips on her wet nose, bucket full of milk hanging from his fingers.

The days were getting shorter again, even if they were still long and warm. Sometimes, in the morning, Fíli hugged his arms and thought ahead to the winter when he would miss his lost coat.

The ale was almost ready. It was ready enough to drink. They did, one night. Each of them had a cup and Fíli and Kíli laughed at how quickly the alcohol went to the couple's heads, forgetting how long it had been since they'd had a drink, themselves. Towards the end of his cup, Fíli was laughing without knowing why, his face hot and tingling. And when he saw the old man reach for the old woman's hand, he almost didn't realize he'd been reaching for Kíli's. He pulled his hand back, and Kíli was laughing wildly again, inexplicably slapping his knee. Fíli couldn't stop himself smiling, even when they went to sleep that night, Kíli's arm thrown heavy over his chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What do you mean the fact that my perspective character keeps blacking out seems indicative of a larger problem with writing transitions I have no idea what ur talking about.
> 
> It's so hard to find information online about surviving abdominal stab wounds with only Medieval-type remedies (and not even good ones at that) available. Gosh I wonder why this is not a more popular search topic? Whatever, y'all are with me on this, right?


	8. The End & The Beginning

He woke up because he was shivering and clinging to Kíli's arm for warmth.

When the sun rose it was foggy and cool. The fields looked dimmer, the insects quieter. The dogs didn't pant heavily in the shadow of the house. The sheep huddled together, standing and swinging their black heads back and forth, like they were looking for something.

The old woman offered to help make him a winter coat. "We can get the materials together," she said.

But he shook his head and said it wasn't so cold, yet. He didn't say what was stirring in his gut, the distant pounding of the hammers, the flickering lights in the darkness at the back of his eyeballs.

Several days later, tired and aching at the end of the day, he sat down in the grass, next to Kíli playing fetch with the dogs.

The words came spilling out of Kíli's mouth while he was still pulling his boots off.

"Do you think we'll stay here?" Most of the dogs were fighting over the stick, now.

Fíli threw his arm around a dog's shoulders and pulled the squirming animal towards his chest. He shrugged.

"We should go home soon. See Ma."

"It's not even fall yet."

"But I think she'll want to see you. It doesn't seem right. Her not knowing what happened." Kíli ran a finger under his nose and sniffed.

"She's never gonna know what happened." The dog yelped under his arm. "Don't you ever think about telling her."

Kíli looked away.

"What? What do you want to do? Tell her how I almost killed someone, how we both got put on trial? How I nearly got us both killed?"

"I wouldn't say it like that," Kíli muttered.

"Just don't say it at all." Fíli looked down at the dog's shoulders and pulled a clump of shedding hair out between them while they sat in silence, save for the panting and whimpering of the ongoing scuffle over the stick. "Thank you," he said, eventually.

"For what?" Kíli had his back to Fíli, now, looking after the dogs.

"You know what for. I don't know what you did, but I should've died. And you saved me."

Fíli heard the chickens going wild out back of the house. The old woman must have been feeding them. One of them should've been doing that.

"I prayed a lot," Kíli said.

"I guess I should be thanking Mahal, then."

Kíli covered his face with his hands and Fíli watched his back heave. "I'm the one who started that fight," he said. "It's not your fault. It's mine."

"You're not the one who blinded him."

"He attacked you first."

Fíli looked down at the ground and dug at the dirt with his fingertips. He told himself, they told each other things like that, but he didn’t even remember anymore. Maybe it was unprovoked. Maybe they attacked first. He closed his eyes.

"Well, we just won't do it again, right?" Kíli sounded very earnest and Fíli smiled down at his hands on the ground.

He shook his head.

Kíli grabbed his hand and stopped him digging through the soil.

They decided, then, as they sat outside and watched the pink-topped clouds darken and drift away, that they couldn't stay. Fíli couldn't describe, not in words, the ringing hammers and blinking lights, the deep dark earth smell, but he knew that Kíli knew it. He knew it just by holding his hand.

They would miss the old couple, miss the farm and the dogs and the little cottage in miniature where the chickens lived and the lake and Sunshine and Flower, but they needed to find somewhere with more regular work for steadier pay. They would need savings to bring home to their ma that winter.

They left with freshly washed clothes and hair with neat braids and patched packs full of hard tack, water skins strapped to their chests.

Fíli felt guilty, tried to protest when the old woman was stuffing their bags with food.

But it wasn't any use.

They said goodbye and started down the road. Fíli said he was sure the old couple was glad to see the back of them. Kíli grinned and started chewing on a piece of tack.

"Where do you want to go?" he asked through his mouthful.

Fíli shrugged. "We can go by the smithy in the next town. He seemed to like you well enough."

Kíli grimaced and swallowed hard. "No," he said, when his throat was clear. "I don't want to go back. Let's just start over, yeah?"

He felt Kíli looking at him. He didn't have to look back to feel his brother's eyes, big and earnest. Just the same as when they were kids and Fíli made all the decisions for the both of them--to climb that tree, to hunt those rabbits, to play this game and not that one, to torture this tutor and not that one.

Fíli reached down and felt his stomach where the bandages were still wrapped. He still felt, sometimes, like he was going to fall apart by the seams. He had dreams where the wound split open again, tore across his stomach, where he was trying to hold his body together while his insides fell out over his slippery fingers.

He didn't know how he could hold himself and the two of them together at the same time.

It was a hot day, though the sun was still climbing in the sky in front of them. Fíli's pack felt heavy and pressed on his side and the sweat stung his wound.

He winced and Kíli grabbed his elbow, said, "Hold on." He stopped and pulled Fíli's pack off his back. Before Fíli could ask what he was doing, he had thrown both packs on the ground and was unpacking Fíli's and tossing items into his own.

"It's not heavy for me," Kíli said when Fíli asked what he was doing. "It hurts you."

Fíli's instinct was to tell him to fuck off. To try to stop him from helping. But Kíli grabbed the hand Fíli was raising to wave him off and said, "Let me help you." And he looked pleased with himself when he finished and hung his own, bulkier pack back over his shoulders. And when he handed Fíli his and Fíli put it back on, he didn't feel the stress in his middle so much anymore.

In his dreams, he couldn't hold himself together. But maybe if Kíli could hold him together, he could hold them together.

"Thank you," he said. He reached out and took Kíli's hand. "Let's start over."

Kíli laughed and their shoulders bumped together as they walked down the empty road.

*  
That’s how it ends, but how it begins is harder to hold onto.

Start here:

_It had been a long day. They'd finally finished a set of ploughshares for a local farmer. They were tired and just wanted to unwind and congratulate themselves before they fell into heavy sleeps and started all over the next day._

_Fíli liked the bargirl. Her name was Netta and though she wasn't as thick and hardy, nor did she have as round and rosy cheeks as would a dwarf woman, she was short and busty with a thick and wild mane of dark hair._

_He went to the bar to order while Kíli sat down and kicked up his feet._

But don’t know where to go from there, so start over:

_Netta laughed and Fíli rolled his eyes, but his gut rolled at the same time and he stared after his brother. He didn't like that Kíli was annoyed--he didn't want to use the word jealous--but he didn't want to stop talking to Netta, either. He so rarely got to talk to anyone else. There was a whole wide world out there._

_The world jealous kept whispering in his ear, even when he was shouting over the bar. Women were a strange topic for them--for most male dwarves, but for them in particular. They'd never had time for anything but family. Closeness, intimacy, those weren't things to be shared with anyone who wasn't blood._

_He looked down at his cracked fingernails and sooty nail beds and suddenly felt silly._

But that’s not a reason. Try again. Worry about how clear-headed you sound in your memory:

_His eyes jumped from Kíli to the men he was talking to. He saw fists flashing on the table, tightness in necks and faces._

_"Hold on," Fíli said._

_He got up, mug tight in white knuckles, conscious of the weight of his knife against his hip, and went to the table._

_"Don't start anything," Netta called behind him._

There was a reason:

_Fíli grabbed Kíli's shoulders and tried to pull him back. He hadn't really heard what the man had said, not yet._

_Kíli thrashed in his grip and the man with the pimpled face and bloody nose screamed through his snot, "You fucking faggot, I'll fucking kill you, you cock-sucking--"_

_Fíli heard that, and he let Kíli's shoulders go. He knew they threatened his brother, and after that he knew nothing except his own momentum and the push of body on body._

Wonder if that’s even true. Wonder if you made it all up to give yourself an excuse, cause don’t you remember, too, the crunch of cheekbone under knuckle, dark blood growing bright in the bar light, seeing a row of yellow teeth and knocking them down like a set of bowling pins, watching them hit the back of the pimpled man’s dark throat on their way down? And don’t you remember seeing that eye, bloodshot and watery blue, framed by straw-like eyelashes and collecting clear viscous fluid around the tear duct? And don’t you remember how that eyeball squinted and shook and you had to hold the skull down with your left hand while your right balled up and punched the eye socket, cracked bones in the orbit, and you kept doing it cause the eye kept closing and you wanted it to look at you, you wanted it to see what was happening, you wanted it to know you as it filled with blood and turned black?

You do remember it, remember it clearly, but it doesn’t seem real and it doesn’t seem right, because the one thing you can’t remember is why.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well here I am like a year later. I had almost all of this very short ending chapter written from the beginning but I really wanted to come back and describe how the fight at the beginning started, but nothing I tried ever sounded right. So y'all had to wait for a year for me to slap something nebulous and weird tense-wise and POV-wise together. BUT I just really wanted this to be done so now it is (?)


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